The departure of Ray Graydon from his position as Rovers manager was a bit of a surprise but at the same time it was not wholly unexpected. I think the vast majority of Gasheads had turned against him by the time he was given the boot and many won't mind who is appointed in his place, just so long as there is a bit more spark about the new man than we saw from Graydon. That is not to say that there is no place in football for poker-faced managers, it is just that we never believed that Ray shared our exhilaration when we won and likewise he didn't seem to hurt as badly when we lost. There is no doubt that Rovers did improve under Graydon, but the progress was so slight that I think it was simply a case of the club bottoming out. The frustration of seeing countless other rivals changing their managers and then rocketing up the table has been extremely painful, especially when Rovers pull in significantly larger crowds and provide better financial resources than a lot of others in this Division. How many other clubs in this league spent £110,000 on one player last summer? On Saturday, when we found ourselves 2-0 down at Rochdale and heading for defeat, Phil Bater went for broke and took off a defender (Austin) and threw on an extra attacker in the form of Junior Agogo. There was nothing to lose, as you get no points whether you lose 2-0 or 4-0 and with a bit of luck Rovers clawed their way back into the game and ended up with a draw. Someone on the radio afterwards said that Graydon's team would have lost that game 2-0 and I agree. His negative substitutions in recent matches against Yeovil and particularly Kidderminster only served to negate our threat to the opposition and in doing so heaped more pressure on our struggling defence. What Bater did at the weekend however, was to tip the balance and give Rochdale some problems to deal with by disrupting their marking using an extra striker. I cannot remember Graydon ever changing to a different formation, other than bringing on Rob Quinn into a defensive five-man midfield. Bater's substitution summed up Ray Graydon's rigid regime in a nutshell, and it could not have been better timed. © Chris Chappell - Monday 19th January 2004 Back to Index